


and all these intersections

by villanelle



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 22:19:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3504821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/villanelle/pseuds/villanelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raised and groomed to serve in the First Interior Squad, Mikasa meets Levi under very different circumstances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and all these intersections

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to write rivamika for an anon prompt, and this probably exemplifies why I'm so bad at writing prompts. I deviated a lot from my original idea and ended up with a mishmash of ideas on the Ackerman family as well as what-if’s? Please note, this is platonic rivamika, and I tried to keep Levi’s and Mikasa’s Ackerman connection as undefined as it is in the canon storyline thus far…

 

 

 

A man is as good as his name.

This is what Kenny learns early in life, as he watches his employer fuck the housemaid on sheets she’ll have to wash later.

She knows he’s watching too. It’s not like she can say anything in protest. If Rod Reiss wants to have her in his bed, then he will, spectators be damned. Yes, that is what it means to be a Reiss. The man need only flash the hand-embroidered family emblem on his jacket lapel, and all the worldly pleasures of Mitras are his to have.

Kenny’s surname is Ackerman, and there are no honors that come with the name. In the hell that is the underground city, his sister can be bought for ten coppers, and his bedridden grandfather subsists on potato-skin gruel.

The old man is perhaps only a few months away from the grave, and Kenny half-thinks ‘ _good riddance_ ’, but he spares enough of his wages on the elder to hear this: their name was not always dirt to be trodden into the ground.

“Our name is to be feared,” the dying man tells him. “And the Reiss family does fear us. Because we are among the only ones who have not forgotten.”

“Among the only ones?” Kenny repeats. “Then there are others?”

And this is how he learns that the Ackerman line can be traced, a branch of it having propagated like a sprig that was cut away from its original stem and replanted elsewhere. He dislikes such partitions; it speaks of weakening.

A man is as good as his legacy allows, and though he has no interest in children, certainly no desire to spawn any of his own, he begins to stake his claim in his sister’s son, a babe with tufts of black hair and skin so translucently pale that the veins make it appear shadowy blue.  _A scrawny little thing_ , he deems it, but the babe grips his finger with all five of its own, and he thinks that yes, he will forge his legacy starting here.

 

* * *

 

Years later, he loses the boy.

 

Loses sway over the boy, rather.

 

But he gains a girl instead.

 

* * *

 

Mikasa doesn’t like it here.

The room in which they locked her is cold and bare, an utter contrast to the warm household her mother had kept. That thought is unwelcome though. If she thinks too much of home, she will dream even more of her mother’s cracked open skull and the stain that grew out from underneath it.

She had hoped to stay with the Jaegers, with the green-eyed boy who had saved her, but then a man who called himself ‘ _Uncle_ ’ showed up, tipping his wide-brimmed hat at the Jaegers’ doorstep. An exchange of low-voiced phrases between this uncle and tensely postured Dr. Jaeger, and off she went, dazedly being traded to another guardian within just a few days.

Guardian. She refuses to refer to Kenny as family.

Kenny may be sheltering her and feeding her, but it is for his own purposes, rather than out of care.

She isn’t sure why he bothers.

 

* * *

 

On her tenth birthday, Kenny brings her a gun.

It isn’t a gift. “Reach for it without permission,” he warns her, extending the pistol grip in her direction. “And I’ll beat you so hard, you’ll wish that I’d just put you down instead.”

Her father had owned something not quite similar, a hunting rifle that her mother had joked was mostly useless due to its tendency to forewarn animals with its wheezy barrel before firing.

The gun Kenny gives her is different.

She estimates that it’s just about the length of her forearm, its composite parts consisting of a ridged grip that molds uncomfortably to her hand, a sleek and polished steel frame, and a multi-chamber cylinder holding the deadly potential of six rounds.

The targets are silhouetted figures constructed of spare wooden boards when she first starts using the gun, and it’s easy to pretend that they are the same men who invaded her home with weaponry of their own.

Kenny starts her at five meters in an open courtyard, then ten, then fifteen, informing her that most face-to-face combat falls within this range. She shoots with both hands at first, to handle the brunt of the recoil, but then she begins practicing with one hand, alternating between right and left before she advances to utilizing two firearms simultaneously, one in each clenched hand.

The early spring air is still crisp with lingering frost when he takes her outside of Mitras, out of Wall Sina entirely, to head for one of the border towns along the circumference of Wall Rose. They travel to terrain that almost resembles the isolated environment of her childhood home, and she’s distracted by how the world seems so much more alive here, even though there are less people. At the periphery of her vision are patches of undisturbed wildflowers, trees growing unencumbered by human habitation, the leaves tickled by sporadic gusts of wind and — oh, she misses the target for the first time in a while.

To her surprise, Kenny does not punish her for this. Instead, he nods and explains that this is why they’re here, to acclimate to the many variables that will get in the way of a real target. To recognize how the wind shifts and moves and how to appropriately adjust for this.

“Does it matter that much,” Mikasa questions, frowning a little at the off-center bullet hole. “When we’re just shooting within a range of under ten?”

“Oh no, no sweetheart, we won’t restrict ourselves to being that unambitious anymore.”

With a grimacing smile, Kenny sets a leather-bound case in front of her and flips open its clasps, revealing another new variable in her training.

Maneuver gear. Similar to the devices she had seen swung around the hips of Military Police patrollers around the capital, and yet, notably, not entirely identical in design.

At ten, Mikasa has already wielded a variety of weapons from knives to wire garrotes, but as she wraps her fingers around the grip of this modified maneuver gear, she feels like nothing has ever fit her hand better.

 

* * *

 

 

_Ten years later_

 

Whenever Nile opens his mouth to begin spewing bullshit, Levi’s first impulse is to tune out the man’s unpleasant voice and count down to the minimum amount of seconds before he can bow out of the conversation with some semblance of civility.

On occasion, his second impulse is to forcibly shave the man’s hairy-lipped excuse of a beard.

It’s not like Nile is his friend anyway. According to Erwin however, achieving the rank of Captain within the Survey Corps and the more embellished designation of Humanity’s Strongest Soldier means that Levi is obligated to intermittently socialize with other members of the military brass and listen to the inner-wall troubles that plague their lives.

For once though, Nile isn’t bragging about his new baby or the bottle of vintage brandy gifted to him by connections in the interior. No, he sounds like he’s been downright humbled by his bureaucratic superiors, and Levi’s ears register the tone as something of half-interest.

“All the higher-ups know it,” Nile tells them honestly. “That I’m Commander in name only. Oh, yes, there’s prestige that comes with the job but our assignments? Window dressing. Small wonder that our units are derided as drunkards when all we’re told to do is guard the homes of the nobility. Anything of real consequence gets assigned to  _his_  unit.”

Normally, Levi would dismiss such talk as just jealousy oozing from a sloshed officer, but what the Military Police Commander says next sends a chilling rush of recognition that marrows through to the bone.

“Kenny Ackerman,” Nile spits with a shake of his head. “You’d think they would pick someone respectable at least to head the First Interior Squad, but no, the job goes to Rod Reiss’s dog. A blatant criminal.”

As he says this, he seems to realize that he’s sitting in the presence of someone else with a criminal background, leading to a narrow-eyed glower in Levi’s direction.

Levi returns his attention to nursing his own bitter ale, but in the weeks that follow, his gaze darts to decipher the eyes of any nearby person with a face half-shadowed by a dark fedora.

No face from his past approaches though, and when he finally encounters a member of the much murmured-about First Interior Squad, it is far from the meeting he expects.

 

* * *

 

“Are you Captain Levi of the Survey Corps?”

There’s always at least one person asking this question at these events in the capital, and Levi’s usual response is to turn around and disappoint the inquiring wide-eyed nobleman or lady by confirming that yes, Humanity’s Strongest is not a looming hulk of brawn that strangles titans with his bare hands.

When he turns around this time however, he’s admittedly taken aback by the person who’s asking.

Posture that accentuates her inches of height over him. Hair that’s a shade darker than his own, its length bound back and braided into an almost severe single plait, leaving but a few spare strokes of ink black across her brow. And features that look still girlishly tender but also resigned to encountering life’s sorrows rather than its pleasures.

Nearly all of the brass in attendance are male officers of higher rank, and Levi notes that he’s not the only one in the room staring at this young woman’s military-style dress. Below the waist, it’s all standard issue, the leather apron and the starched white pants tucked into high calf-hugging boots. Her high-collared jacket is black edged with gold though, and Levi finds no hint of insignia indicating allegiance to any of the three military branches.

One thing’s for certain, she doesn’t look like she’s about to ask for his autograph.

“I am,” he answers, returning her coolly assessing gaze with one of his own. “And you are?”

“Just another soldier who wanted to match a face to the legend.” A pause and then after sweeping her eyes across the room, a dryly voiced comment. “Your presence in the capital is quite a rarity, Captain. I heard that you don’t enjoy these sorts of affairs.”

“Not exactly,” Levi replies, punctuating his next words more sharply. “I don’t mind the free dinner or drink, but I find quite often that it's the people I don't much care for."

The corner of her mouth quirks upward, and it’s not really a smile at finding his remark humourous but closer to a fleeting expression of satisfaction at having something confirmed.

“You’re as blunt as I heard you’d be,” the young woman notifies him. The brief glimmer of teasing in her eyes is practically daring Levi to demand her source for all this apparent damn gossip on his personality, but he’s not in the mood to continue being half-aggravated, half-intrigued by someone who appears barely old enough to have graduated beyond cadet.

“You seem to have heard a great deal about me, whereas I don’t even know your name.”

She hesitates and then softly pronounces the foreign configuration of three syllables.

“Mikasa. That’s my name.”

She tells him her name like it’s a secret, and suddenly she no longer seems so assured in speaking to him, her eyes flicking carefully to other directions, to other people who might be watching.

Soon after, she excuses herself and disappears, surprisingly quick even to his eyes, into one of the denser pockets of military personnel in the room. It isn’t until later that evening that he thinks back to a slightly unusual detail: in the capital city where everyone tended to be fond of throwing about and emphasizing their family names, she’d introduced herself by divulging only the first part of her nomenclature, leaving him to wonder if the other part of her name sounded as unfamiliar as the one she had shared.

 

* * *

 

Half a year passes by before he sees Mikasa again.

The Survey Corps, depleted of two-thirds of its forces on their most recent expedition, straggles back to the capital on the horses that are left. Back to Mitras to report to a weak-chinned and even weaker-spined king. Back to Mitras to be ridiculed by the masses along the way.

Upon arrival, Levi offers to go with Erwin, to stand by his side at the meetings where they will meet a more private form of scorn. The Commander shakes his head, insists that he will go forth alone, and so Levi devotes his time to punishing the flesh of his hands which can never, ever, reclaim more than he has lost. He scalds the stone floors of their guest chambers with relentless scrubs of bleach, and after the skin around his knuckles are inflamed red from that, he unleashes himself, swords in hand, on the targets in the military compound’s courtyard.

The violence of his blades lacerating through wood and rupturing sandbags perks the ears of idle Military Police troopers, and they start rubbernecking around the courtyard to watch Humanity’s Strongest as close to action as many of them will probably ever see.

On the fifth day Levi shows up, preparing to eviscerate every inanimate target he can get his hands on, he finds his intentions frustrated by a courtyard that is set up with a shooting range instead of the maneuver training circuit. He’s about to just pivot on his heel and leave when he hears a nasally drawling voice.

“Oh look…it’s Humanity’s Strongest. Pity he can’t lend any of that strength to the ones that follow him.”

His plan to go back and clean the floors again evaporates. Never mind, he’ll identify the fucker that just said that, beat the bastard’s face until it’s indistinguishable from dirt, and then perhaps wipe down his boots from the blood that will surely ensue…

Except he doesn’t do that either.

Because he turns around and spots the prig who just ignited every dormant murderous impulse in his body, but he also spots a familiar face next to the prig.

“You know, I’m not even sure we should call him Humanity’s Strongest anymore. What do you think, Mikasa? You could probably take this guy right? Erwin’s old dog is past his prime.”

And it is Mikasa in the flesh, not the spectre that had occasionally and fleetingly entered his mind whenever he recalled meeting that girl with the strange-sounding name. She’s dressed in the same black and gold jacket that he last saw her in, but this time, there’s a whole ring of people wearing the same uniform around her, and the others are all gazing derisively at him like he’s tracked a trail of shit into  _their_  courtyard.

She’s the only one looking at him like he matters.

Distantly, his ears register that they have an audience flocking around the range and that there’s a chant developing around them.

 _Duel_ , they’re crying out, and Levi shivers as the fever of loathing and disgust rises in him.

“Is that what entertains you inner-wall folk?” he hisses at the group in the center. “Dueling with weapons that kill people? You think you can kill a titan by firing off a couple rounds?”

His original target, the bastard in black and gold who first spoke up, laughs and gestures at the solemn-faced young woman who’s no longer standing next to him. “Oh don’t you worry, Captain, this is Mikasa  _Ackerman_. She’s as good with your blades as she is with a gun. Enough to match you I dare say.”

Mikasa Ackerman. The whole name reverberates through Levi’s head, ricocheting like a misfired bullet.

He might have been intrigued by her that night six months ago, but on her part, she had not approached him out of intrigue. She had targeted him with her questions because she must have known who he was.

Levi cuts a rigid-shouldered path out of the courtyard, deaf to the jeers that follow him, to everything but the name on a repeating reel that has unstabilized his world more than the majority of titan encounters in recent years. Someone’s calling his name, frantic voice chasing him down the corridor, and he’s almost reached the door to his chambers when he feels the tug on his hand.

Instinctively, reactively hostile, he spins and it’s Mikasa Ackerman he slams against the wall, the resulting dull thud almost cruelly satisfying to hear.

“You,” he accuses, his throat coated in suspicion and venom. “You knew who I was, and you purposely sought me out that night.”

Mikasa hardly looks phased. He’s got her pinned by both arms, and he doesn’t let go when her left leg tries to kick, but then she straight-off headbutts him in the nose, and he feels the blood gushing from one nostril as she frees one hand. Lashing forward, launching at him, she counters each of his defensive strikes, and when she swipes for Levi’s feet again, he goes down hard.

She clamps his arms down the same way he did to hers, but she makes sure to keep her head away from his as she looks down on him, her braid unraveled and spilling into messy strands hanging around her face.

The innate urge in Levi is to fight, to continue fighting, but Mikasa slants her full weight to straddle and drop down on his, her voice rushing out in a whispery breath.

“Yes, you’re right. I sought Levi Ackerman that night.”

“Why?”

Her lashes sweep down, closing him off from her darkly reflective orbs. “Because I have heard so much about you, Levi. Throughout my life. Not about you as Humanity’s Strongest, but about you as the greatest pride of our….mutual benefactor.”

She sounds like she’s afraid to say the name, and so Levi harshly pronounces it instead.

“Is that what you call Kenny? A benefactor? I think he might have given us different benefits then.”

He can see her eyes again, and it’s evident from the dig of her nails into the veiny flesh at his wrists that his implication offends her.

“So you wanted to find me. Why didn’t you just tell me that?”

“I didn’t know if I could trust you. It’s been a while — since I could trust another person with the name Ackerman.”

Still on his back, still wondering how he landed under this girl when he’s got years of experience on her, Levi fixes her with arched brows and a questioning gaze. “I consider myself no longer aligned with Kenny in any way. You on the other hand — I’m going to assume that the colors are on your back are those of the First Interior Squad.”

In response, she presses her hand almost gently down on his chest, leaning in very closely to his ear. “Don’t you understand why I need your help then?”

Mikasa sits up and releases her hold on him.

 

“I want to defect.”

 

 

 


End file.
